


Wild Flower

by earlgreytea68



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-11
Updated: 2017-11-11
Packaged: 2019-01-31 16:36:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12685878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/earlgreytea68/pseuds/earlgreytea68
Summary: Arthur is being wooed.





	Wild Flower

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dandalfthedisco](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dandalfthedisco/gifts).



> This is for dandalfthedisco, who won me in the auction in memory of our beloved AnArtificialAspidistra. I'm so sorry it took so long, darling disco, but I hope you like the result!!
> 
> The prompt was Arthur having tattoos of wildflowers. It was such a great prompt and it inspired what I think is the sort of gentle, almost slow-motion feeling I felt this story had in tone as I was working on it. Soft and sweet, beauty in surprising places, like wildflowers. :-)

“I am wooing you, darling,” Eames announces, as straightforwardly and simply as Eames proclaims the most nonsensical things. 

And really, in Arthur’s estimation, this is among the most nonsensical things Eames has ever said. Eames might as well have walked into the cottage where they’re holed up prepping for this latest job and said, _I have just been made Prime Minister, darling_ , and Arthur would have been less startled. 

As it is, Arthur doesn’t know what to say, just that he has to say something, because Eames reads anything he likes into silences. If Arthur stays silent, Eames will think he is acquiescing in being wooed. 

So Arthur can’t stay silent, but because he can’t think of anything better to say, he says, “What does that mean?” 

“To woo,” Eames says, settling backwards on one of the dining room chairs that’s been dragged over for practice Somnacin runs, resting his arms casually along the back. “It means I’m going to win you over.” 

They’re alone in the cottage. Arthur kind of hates working out of the cottage. He much prefers warehouses. Cottages are places where people live and they encourage way too much familiarity, as is currently happening with Eames. People relax in cottages in a way they don’t relax in warehouses, and Arthur prefers his teams not to relax. Dreamcrime isn’t exactly an industry conducive to not being on your toes at all times. 

But this is Leena’s job and Leena is brilliant, even if Arthur hates to admit it, and Arthur always ends up just following the brilliant ones around on all of their most terrible of ideas, and she was the one who hired the cottage. It’s summer in Finland, and Leena said she wasn’t about to miss out on a little bit of lake living, and so she insisted they hole up in a cottage close by a lake. It’s undeniably gorgeous, with an open floorplan big enough for all of them to be in at once and a commanding view of the peaceful, secluded lake. But it’s also ridiculously distracting. Leena and her chemist and her architect are constantly going out to sit on the pier and smoke weed and contemplate the mysteries of life in the silence of the wilderness. Arthur knows they consider him to be hopelessly old and unhip in his insistence that he stay in the cottage working. But that is, after all, why they’re there. 

“Win me over to what?” Arthur asks warily. He assumes Eames has been sent inside to convince Arthur to come join everyone in the sauna or something. Arthur has thus far avoided joining everyone in the sauna. This isn’t fucking spring break. 

Eames looks amused. “To me.” 

Arthur is more startled. “To _you_?”

Eames shouts laughter. “Darling, I love how honestly shocked you seem. Did you think I was wooing you on someone else’s behalf?” 

“I didn’t think you were wooing me at all,” Arthur says, annoyed at being laughed at. “What are you wooing me with?” 

“My charm?” suggests Eames. 

Arthur snorts. “Try harder,” he says. 

He didn’t literally mean for Eames to try harder but he feels like Eames, well, _does_. 

Arthur can’t sleep, which isn’t unusual in their line of work, of course. It’s the middle of the night, but it’s not dark out, and Arthur thinks that might be his favorite thing about this Finnish cottage: that he can sit by himself on the pier on the middle of the night when he can’t sleep and have it not feel like it’s the middle of the night and he can’t sleep. Instead, it feels comforting, like the sun is just about to slip back over the horizon, and Arthur isn’t so broken that he’s awake when he should be asleep, because daylight is right around the corner. 

It’s quiet on the lake, and for a second Arthur lets himself just…breathe. It doesn’t happen very often, this indulgence in stillness. His brain is usually much too busy; sleep was difficult for him even before regular Somnacin use. But just now he lets himself close his eyes and listen to the press of the silence all around him. No, not so much silence as the press of nature sounds. Arthur is a city person. The lack of people in the noises around him is exotic and curious, unfamiliar. 

And then there is a person-generated sound, a step through the grass sweeping down from the cottage to the shore, a movement in the silver light. 

Arthur reaches for his gun. 

But it’s clear once he really looks that it’s Eames coming toward him. 

He keeps his hand on the gun, which Eames notices. 

“Stand down, petal,” he says lightly, and then he settles onto the pier next to Arthur, unconcerned. “Leave it to you to bring a gun to your meditative contemplation of nature.” 

“I’m not contemplating nature,” Arthur says. 

Eames looks at him. “Couldn’t sleep?” 

Arthur doesn’t answer. Arthur says, “Why are you here?” 

“I don’t know about you, but they’re paying me, and I tend to be a sucker for a good paycheck.” 

“I don’t mean _here_ like in Finland,” says Arthur, exasperated. “I mean, here. With me. Right now.” 

Eames tips a smile at him. “I told you, pet: I’m wooing you.” 

“I don’t know what that means,” Arthur reiterates, frustrated. 

Eames’s smile grows in the light of the white night. “And I already explained. And then you told me to try harder. Which I think is a directive you just give me automatically. You literally _do_ give it to me in your sleep, quite often.” 

Arthur snorts. 

Eames says, “I think of you in sleek, hard cities, but I rather like you out here, like this. You’re so sharp and jagged against the trees. You shine like lethal silver amongst all the green.” 

Arthur wants to demand what ridiculous madness Eames is spouting but the truth is that Eames says it in such a low voice, with such passion, that Arthur can’t say a word against it. It _is_ ridiculous but he also can’t remember the last time someone spoke to him in that tone of voice, like, he, Arthur, is an urgently compelling force. 

So Arthur just swallows and stares at Eames. 

Eames says, “You’re very beautiful, darling. How anyone looks at anything but you—how anyone even sees trees and a lake, when you’re around, is beyond me.” 

“That’s…” Arthur realizes he doesn’t have a voice, so he clears his throat and licks his lips and tries again. “That’s absurd.” 

“In what way?” asks Eames, sounding amused. 

“I’m not _beautiful_ ,” says Arthur, because somehow that’s the most obvious absurd statement to cling to. 

“Darling,” Eames says, and cups a gentle hand along Arthur’s cheek. “You don’t look at yourself as much as I do. You are by no means an authority on this. Trust me. I’m the expert.” 

Arthur isn’t beautiful. Arthur hasn’t been beautiful, to anyone, in years and years and years and years. Since a time in his youth when he vaguely remembers a mother who is shadowy with the fogs of ancient history, looking at him like he’d hung the moon. 

He hasn’t thought about that before, but there’s something similar in the way that Eames looks at him. It’s not identical, of course, because Eames adds a hard edge, an Eamesian sharpness to the way his eyes rest on Arthur. But that warm fondness, the way he is perpetually unfazed by all of the things about Arthur that intimidate everyone else—that reminds Arthur of a long-ago time, and that might be why he tries to avoid Eames and why he fails at it so terribly: Eames makes him remember what it’s like to be found precious and delightful and cherishable and…it’s easier not to remember that. 

Arthur whispers, “What if I don’t want to be wooed?” Because he doesn’t want to be. It’s…too much. All just… _too much_. 

“Don’t you?” asks Eames, voice as gentle as the fingers he brushes along Arthur’s hairline, along his eyebrows. 

Arthur closes his eyes, leaning in to the whisper of this touch. He manages, “No.” 

“Ah. My mistake. What do you want, then, love?” 

It’s so tender, and earnest, and it should be _ridiculous_. Arthur isn’t like this, and shouldn’t care about this, but it’s been a really long time since anyone asked him what he wanted. 

He answers almost automatically, with the thing he tells himself he wants every day. “I want this job to be successful.” 

Eames chuckles. He’s shifted forward now, his lips against Arthur’s temple. Arthur can feel the exhalation that accompanies his amusement. “Of course you do, pet. Do you want anything not related to work? Ever?” 

“I haven’t thought about it. In forever.” It’s the truth, and Arthur is annoyed with himself for it. 

“Which is a shame. Because it’s all I think about.” 

“All you think about is what you want?” 

“No, darling, all I think about is what _you_ want.” 

It shouldn’t stun him. It shouldn’t freeze his breath in his chest. But it does. Arthur can’t deny that it does. He makes a noise that is a strangled sort of sob, a noise like he’s never heard himself make before, and then he pulls Eames in hard for a kiss. 

Eames is caught off-guard, makes a little _oomph_ noise that is both endearing and hot, because everything about Eames seems to be both in Arthur’s head, but when he kisses back it is ferocious, and Arthur tries to scramble as close to Eames as he can get, wants in fact to be directly on Eames’s lap. Really, he wants to burrow right into Eames’s skin, but he’ll settle for getting onto his lap. 

Arthur is single-minded in his pursuit of his goals, once he settles on them. It might take him a while, but once he makes up his mind, it is _made up_ , and he is unstoppable. So, really, getting on Eames’s lap should be fairly straightforward. 

Except for the fact that he forgets they’re on a dock and tumbles straight into the water. 

It’s mostly humiliating. It’s not deep and he’s not in any danger and he can swim anyhow. But it’s _humiliating_. 

But when his head comes back above water, Eames is sitting on the dock gaping down at him, and instead of looking like he’s about to break out into hysterical laughter, he looks concerned. Arthur feels like that might be worse. 

“I’m fine,” he says preemptively, feeling self-conscious and irritated with himself. 

Eames, after a moment, tips his mouth up into a smile and says, “Of course you are. I was just thinking of joining you.” 

And then he rolls off the dock into the water. 

“Idiot,” Arthur says, as soon as Eames surfaces. “There’s no reason for both of us to be in here.” 

“Darling,” says Eames, and his smile is ensnaring, Arthur feels hooked, drawn in, “you’re in here.” He says it so simply, like he would follow Arthur absolutely anywhere, and in that moment Arthur knows that it’s true. It’s just…true, even though it seems unbelievable, like this white night all around them. 

Arthur drifts closer to Eames in the water, presses his forehead against his and closes his eyes and breathes. Eames doesn’t move, he breathes with Arthur, and Arthur feels completely swept away, completely overwhelmed. Arthur feels like he’ll never find the footing he had ever again, and that will be okay, because Eames is there. 

Arthur kisses him. 

***

Arthur’s room is the best room in the cottage, large and airy while also being charming and cozy. Arthur was the first one at the cottage, the first one to start work, so he commandeered it. It nestles under the cottage’s eaves, and the windows look out over the lake. 

Eames murmurs, when he sees it, his hands shedding Arthur’s sodden shirt, “Look at you. Best room in the house.” 

“Always,” says Arthur, because that’s always true. 

“You know, if you were anyone else, I’d fight you for it,” says Eames, ducking to taste Arthur’s neck, still damp from the lake. 

“You don’t fight,” Arthur says, tipping his head back, closing his hands into Eames’s hair. It’s odd, to be in this position he would never have anticipated, and to have to be wonderful, and to also have it be like every other interaction he’s ever had with Eames. It makes him feel both bold and comfortable, like maybe this strange new world he’s stepping into will feel just like home. “Not clean, anyway.” 

Eames chuckles into his skin and draws back a bit, and Arthur thinks he’s about to say something, and then he stops, and he stares at Arthur’s chest, revealed for the first time. 

Arthur knows he’s blushing and wants to reach for the shirt Eames has just stripped him out of and forces himself not to. It’s nothing to be embarrassed about, he tells himself, even though he’s assiduously hidden this from the dreamsharing community because he’s pretty sure it’s something to be embarrassed about. 

Eames reaches forward and trails his fingers along the curling lines of Arthur’s tattoos and breathes out, “Arthur.” 

“They’re just…” Arthur says. “I mean, they’re tattoos. You of all people know—”

“They’re wildflowers. Darling. You have an entire field of wildflowers on your body.” 

“I don’t…” Arthur doesn’t know what else to say, because, actually, he does. 

Eames nudges him this way and that, admiring the tattoos. “How long have you been at this? The work is gorgeous, but it’s all different styles. You’ve been switching up the artist.” 

“I don’t know,” Arthur says, “I…” He looks down at this chest, and then abruptly doesn’t want to lie. “Every time I did something that made me feel ugly, I found someone to put something beautiful on me.” 

Eames’s finger stills on his skin. He looks up at Arthur. He doesn’t say anything. 

Arthur says into the silence, stubborn now in his commitment to this. “We do a lot of things I’m not especially proud of. It’s not like I don’t realize that sometimes we do things—I do things—that aren’t great. And we lead these transitory lives, flitting from place to place, and we never get to… to sit and to be, for very long, and it’s fine, I chose this, and I love this, I love what I do, I’m good at what I do, but I—”

“We don’t get much beauty,” Eames says. “We don’t get much beauty around us, and you love beauty, so you—you wrap yourself in the most beautiful clothing you can buy. And you put the most beautiful things you can think of on your body. Oh, love, I should have realized this. This should not have surprised me at all.” Eames pauses for a second, tracing a flurry of blossoms over Arthur’s shoulder, and Arthur lets him, feeling much less awkward than he expected, feeling… comfortable, and bold. Eames continues, “We could have been getting tattoos together all this time. Comparing notes on artists. We must do it in the future. Do you promise? Next tattoo together?” 

And it seems astonishing, because Arthur has tried to avoid making promises, commitments can be suicide in this business, Dom and Mal proved that, but Arthur opens his mouth and Arthur says, “I promise.” And means it.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Wild Flower Tattoos](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12924162) by [Sendryl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sendryl/pseuds/Sendryl)




End file.
